This International Standard defines the OS I Network Service in terms of
a) the primitive actions and events of the Service;
b) the parameters associated with each primitive action and event, and the form which they take;
c) the interrelationship between, and the valid sequences of, these actions and events.
The principal objectives of this International Standard are
a) to specify the characteristics of a conceptual Network Service and thus supplement the Reference Model in guiding the development of Network Layer protocols;
b) to encourage convergence of the capabilities offered by providers of subnetworks;
c) to provide a basis for the individual enhancement of existing heterogeneous subnetworks to a common subnetwork-independent Network Service to enable them to be concatenated for the purpose of providing global communication. (Such concatenation may involve optional additional functions which are not defined in this International Standard.) A definition of the quality of service is an important element of this International Standard;
d) to provide a basis for the development and implemen-tation of subnetwork-independent Transport Layer protocols decoupled from the variability of underlying public and private subnetworks and their specific interface requirements.
This International Standard does not specify individual implementations or products nor does it constrain the implemen-tation of entities and interfaces within a system.
There is no conformance of equipment to this International Standard. Instead, conformance is achieved through implementation of conforming OS I Network protocols which fulfill the Network Service defined in this International Standard.
DS/ISO 8348:1991 history
1991DS/ISO 8348/Till.3:1991 Information processing systems - Data communications - Network service definition -ADDENDUM 3: Additional features of the network service
1991DS/ISO 8348/Till.2:1991 Information processing systems - Data Communications - Network service definition -ADDENDUM 2: Network layer addressing
1991DS/ISO 8348/Till.1:1991 Information processing systems - Data Communications - Network service definition -Addendum 1: Connectionless-mode transmission
1991DS/ISO 8348:1991 Information processing systems. Data communications. Network service definition